


Shimmer

by Jane St Clair (3jane)



Category: Andromeda
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-08
Updated: 2011-08-08
Packaged: 2017-10-22 09:59:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/236827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/3jane/pseuds/Jane%20St%20Clair
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harper lives in the dark.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shimmer

The thing that didn't occur to him until he was away from Earth was  
that spacers would look like ice.  Even given the amount of his life  
he'd spent underground or living nocturnally, he'd still managed a  
few sunburns, a few freckles.  Celtic heritage being what it was,  
he'd been born for somewhere perpetually overcast, so he supposed he  
probably didn't look as strange to Beka as she did to him, but.

Ice.  Not just the skin at the base of her throat or the back of her  
neck, the places that would normally be covered up.  Hands,  
forearms, face.  White.  Big pupils in her eyes.

He remembers sitting on a bunk while she cleaned the wire-cuts on  
his wrist.  Her fingers on the skin of his forearms curious, until  
eventually she spit on her thumb, the way his mom used to sometimes,  
and rubbed at the skin, pushing back the dirt to get a better look  
at him.  Then shook her head, got a cloth and washed his wrists and  
bandaged them in something palely skin-toned and apparently  
waterproof, and told him to go shower.

The heat of the water the Maru produced would have been enough to  
keep him with her. Blasting heat he could wet himself down with,  
tiny plexiglass room that contained all the steam so he didn't  
freeze between one water-stream and the next.  He found her liquid  
antibacterial soap on the first pass through the bathroom.  It  
reminded him of one of the better-equipped missionary medical  
stations that grew up on Martha's Vineyard when he was a tiny kid.    
The smell of his mother's body while she held his face against her  
body, out of the ocean spray, while priests ferried people across,  
her voice in his ears reminding him how lucky they were that someone  
had decided he was worth treatment.  Hours in the prefab station  
next to the beach, while tattooed nurses scrubbed him down and  
checked him over, listened to his chest and click-hissed back and  
forth to each other in some language that he didn't understand.    
Whatever they gave him stopped the chest-ripping cough he'd had  
since the previous winter, so he wasn't going to complain.  And  
while he were on the island, before they had to go back, he saw surf  
for the first time.

Big waves, big rocks.  One of the orderlies was looking out at it  
like something magical, and Harper was feeling brave enough to ask.    
Which is how he learned the word "surfing," eight years before he  
first got a shot at doing it.

Harper thought about that, in Beka's shower.  Scrubbing himself as  
clean as he could get with the medical-smelling gel.  Even in his  
hair, thinking it might kill whatever'd decided to hitch a ride on  
him out of the gravity well.  After most of an hour's cleanup, he  
still had two minutes of his allotted hot water, and he ached.  All  
over.  Crouched on the floor, head over his knees, and let the spray  
hit him in a continuous rush that he had no right to expect.  It  
felt so good he was almost crying from it by the time the water  
temperature shifted back to cold.

Afterwards, he sat on her bunk again in coveralls pulled back to  
leave him naked to the waist, and she went over him inch by inch.    
Touched every scar, traced the lump of every rib that hadn't healed  
into quite the same curve he was born with.  She spit on his arm  
again and rubbed at it until he jerked away.

"It's *clean*.  I swear to god I know how to take a bath."

"You're always this colour?"

He cocked his head at her.  Caught his reflection in the metal-  
shimmer of the wall and realized how much he looked like a wet cat,  
straightened.  "Depends on how much sunlight I'm getting."

Beat.  "Radiation burn."

"*Suntan.*"

"Harper, I can't tell it from a scar, my med scanners can't tell it  
from a burn, and solar radiation did it to you.  Does it hurt?"

She wouldn't leave it alone, even after the twentieth promise that  
it didn't bother him *at all*, and she didn't let it go until months  
later, when he'd finally faded to the point that she couldn't see  
the colour distinction in him anymore.  It was probably then that he  
took to wearing long sleeves.  The Maru wasn't as cold as a Boston  
night, and he could have survived with more skin showing than he  
did, but he worked better without his jacket on, and less skin  
showing was just better in many ways.

She burned everything of his she could get her hands on.  The first  
time she hurled one of his t-shirts into an inflammable container  
along with something that smelled suspiciously like gasoline, he  
didn't actually believe she'd light it until it was in flames.    
Sealed and oxygen controlled, funnelling the fumes back into the  
Maru's atmosphere recyclers, but undeniably on fire.

He scavenged through the ship.  The coveralls he'd pulled on after  
that first shower, old crewmembers' discards, a box of clothes in a  
side hold that turned out to be her father's, and that he'd have  
done better to leave alone for the shit it got him.  And even after  
that fight, which went down as the single most terrifying of his  
life, he didn't put everything back.  Eventually she gave in.  Not  
on the smoky leather jacket he was coveting, but on some of the  
basic things that he needed, though she took them off into the  
bathroom, and when she gave them back they didn't smell like  
anything but her perfume.

The first time he went digging through *her* clothes, he managed to  
stop her cold.  His shoulders were broader than hers, but she was  
taller, and at the time she probably weighed fully as much as he  
did, and to him it didn't matter.  Tight, skin-black, functional  
around the ship.  Like everything else he was wearing at the time,  
those shirts smelled like Beka.  So did the ship, the soap, his bed  
at night, the pilot's seat.  Her ship.

His baby, though.  It took him something less than three months to  
learn the Maru.  He got up in the night and explored, feeding off  
the liquid caffeine he'd discovered in cold-storage in the Maru's  
galley.  Finding things and fixing them, sometimes for hours before  
Beka came and found him.  And even then, more often she just asked  
him something and then went back to piloting or captaining or  
whatever it was she did while he wasn't watching her.

Just occasionally, she caught him by the collar or the hair at the  
base of his skull and dragged him back to bed, and by that time he  
was usually shaking from sleep-deprivation.  Thirty, thirty-five  
hours on his feet.  The second time he tried to wander away after  
she'd brought him back, she put him in her bed with her.  Clamped  
her arms around his shoulders and refused to let him move until he  
settled down enough to rest.  Something like a cave, sandwiched  
between Beka and the wall, not really listening to her growl at him.

Beka hung onto him for a long time before she let him out on his own  
the first time.  Like a dog you want to stay home, so you keep it  
chained in the yard until it can smell itself on everything. That  
was what she told him, at least.  And it wasn't planetside, either,  
just a drift.  But it was more open space than he'd experienced in  
months, enough that he could let loose and just run for a while,  
dodging people and carts until he got through the market. Running  
flat out after.  He was out of breath before he expected to be, but  
after weeks on the Maru he shouldn't have expected anything else.    
And even Earth's mess of an atmosphere had more oxygen than any he'd  
encountered in space.

By the time he collapsed, though, he was far outside the high-  
traffic areas of the drift.  Industrial storage units on all sides  
of him, lined with exposed circuitry that set all of his scavenging  
nerves screaming.  A lot of what showed was redundant, and it only  
took a few minutes for him to rewire five boards to a single set of  
power cables and salvage the freed-up wiring.

The wires, plus the various machine parts he carried habitually on  
his pockets, plus a board that he separated very carefully from its  
circuits, were enough for him to establish a link to the drift's  
mainframe.  It didn't contain anything as elaborate as an A.I., and  
its security features were random, free-ranging dog-soldiers that  
took out whatever they found but missed way too much to be  
effective.  They shimmered whenever they moved, and he could hide  
from them just by sliding himself into whatever data archive he was  
accessing.

Later, when she figured out what he'd been up to, Beka had a very  
direct conversation with him, the upshot of which was if he was  
going to run blackmail projects on the side, he had to let her know  
first.  She made him give her the money he'd extorted from her then-  
current employer, which he supposed was fair, since it'd been  
earmarked for her originally.  But some of the things the bug'd been  
into were miles into illegal even by the drift's shaky definitions  
of law and order, and it would have been so *easy* to let that  
information loose.  No firewalls anywhere.  Enforcement's database  
was on the same system with the business records, and they didn't  
even see fit to go through the information at their fingertips.

Beka laughed.  She'd been hitting him, smacking around his head in a  
way that didn't really hurt, but made it *really* clear how angry  
she was with him.  Furious, shrieking, listing the things she was  
going to do to him, the least ugly of which involved spacing just  
the lower half of him, and seeing how long it took his balls to  
freeze and fall off.  While he tried to explain, while he offered  
her money.  While he waited for 'send you back' to come up on the  
list of his unspeakable punishments.  It didn't, but he could feel  
it, somewhere back there, and the fact that it didn't come out made  
him wonder how angry with him she was, really.

When she broke down and laughed, she was positively scary.  Tears  
streaking down her face, hugging herself, still swearing at him  
while she slid down the wall to sit on the floor.

Hours later she tracked him down, hunched over him hunched over the  
AP tanks, and bit his ear. Hard.  He yelped, snapped his head back  
and was surprised not to catch her in the face.  She was already  
gone.  Leaning back against the rail, smirking at him while he  
clutched at the bloody, aching cartilage.

"Fuck, Beka!"

"Don't *ever* do that again.  I did *not* want to have to sell that  
shipment myself just to make expenses."

He glared at her.  "I gave you the money."

"Seamus, I can't walk away from a deal unpaid, even if I do get the  
cash from you under the table.  It gives the next guy the idea that  
he can fuck us over one better, understand?"

"Yeah."

"Fine.  Come on and I'll feed you."

She meant it literally.  Actual fruit, a bit dried out from being  
shipped but not rotten.  Not even softening, mostly.  She carved it  
up with the sharpened edge of a file that he'd put together for her,  
fed the first apple slice straight into his mouth.

The fruit was part of the attraction.  Others things fed it, too.    
Refined sugar.  Beka's media salvage, pirated data written onto  
scraps of whatever she had lying around.  Hot water.  He wasn't  
supposed to have all of this at once.  He maybe wouldn't appreciate  
it so much, he'd get used to it, expect this *availability* of  
precious things when he should still be being grateful for eating on  
a regular basis.  It might be what made the Ubers into such  
bastards, having all of this at once.

It made him shake sometimes, though never when Beka was around.  And  
then for different reasons when Beka collected Rev from wherever  
he'd been.  Magog.  She warned Harper a couple of times, but it was  
one thing to hear her say it and another thing to see one actually  
on the Maru.

Harper disappeared.  Crawled down into the ship, borrowed Beka's  
clothes, grabbed food when there was no one near the galley and ate  
what he'd stashed around the ship the rest of the time, trusting  
that Beka's smell and her perfume would be enough that the Magog  
couldn't track him too easily.  He did, for whatever it was worth,  
know that he was being unreasonable.  If it got along with Beka and  
hadn't hurt her in however many years they'd been together, it  
probably wasn't going to eat him.  Not if Beka still thought he was  
useful.  But this wasn't the kind of thing he really got to think  
through, just a gut reaction.  And sometimes Beka came looking for  
him.  Stood still long enough to make it clear she was alone, and  
waited for Harper to come out.

She brought him Sparky.  She'd bought it on the last station,  
stashed it somewhere that he hasn't been able to find.  Hugged him  
hard when he came close enough to get it.  He let her sway back and  
forth with him for a minute, shaking him from foot to foot like a  
ratty stuffed animal. Though he would have thought Rev was better  
suited to the role.  But maybe that close was too close, with Rev.    
Or maybe she just didn't like mauling things that could maul her  
back.

He bit her.  Not hard enough to draw blood, but definitely hard  
enough for her to stiff-arm him back against the wall.  Glaring  
while he laughed at her.

And Rev was watching them, at the far end of the corridor, showing  
all his teeth.  This horrible second where Harper was sure he was  
going to die, then the world-twisting one where he understood that  
Rev was laughing at them.  Twistedly alien, and yet.  A sense of  
humour.

Sometime after that, Harper went back to bunking above Beka.  Padded  
in with his boots off when Beka was curled up and Rev was  
meditating, vaulted onto his mattress, curled up and tried very hard  
to be asleep.  And did, eventually, and rolled out of bed in the  
morning at the same time Beka did, at least an hour after Rev, and  
stole her breakfast while she wasn't looking.

Rev gave Harper a lot of space for a long time.  It was nearly  
impossible on a ship as small as the Maru, but he stayed out of  
arm's reach as much as he could, and kept his claws tucked into his  
fur if they had to brush closer.  When he did approach, it was  
usually verbal rather than physical. From across a room, a gentle-  
voiced question, or an offer of something.

The particular gift he found for Harper came in the form of  
recaptured radio waves.  Distant signals, hundreds of years old at  
that point, damaged by radiation and relativity, but still.  Human  
voices, some of them from Earth.  Echoing music.  Harper taught  
himself wave theory in the process of sorting out the broadcasts.    
It took a month to clean up the waveforms on the first set, then two  
hours to write them all to storage.  On the next drift, he traded  
shining bits of music for clothes that had never belonged to Beka or  
her father.  Hair gel that smelled like too-sweet tropical fruit,  
and something else that he thought was hair gel until he absent-  
mindedly licked a bit off the back of his hand and discovered it was  
flavoured.  Not quite food, just entirely edible, very playful, and,  
he found out later, disturbingly aphrodisiac.

The luminous, slightly reptilian girl he met later in that hour  
liked the smell that lingered on him.  Her tongue sliding between  
the folds of his fingers was the most erotic thing he'd ever felt.    
She left glittering trails everywhere she licked him, stuff that he  
couldn't wash off for days.  And while he didn't appear to be  
allergic to the lubricant, he did seem to be at least mildly  
allergic to *her*.  He itched, all over.

He stood in the shower stall for half an hour one morning,  
scratching frantically until he took off the traces of her, along  
with the top layer of his skin.  More than a fair trade.  He  
scrubbed hard, after, until he was faintly red all over, shedding  
that first moment of alien sex like a sunburn.

Four mismatched radio tracks spliced together gave him enough white  
noise to work to, most of the time.  Overlapping chords and eras,  
never as completely discordant as he thought they should be.

And still, on some level, his body always knew that he wasn't where  
he was supposed to be.  The artificial gravity made him sick at odd  
moments.  He got past that, got used to running in the half-hanging  
state that planets never had.  That his planet never had.  If he  
could ever master that feeling, he was sure he'd be able to walk on  
walls.

What he experienced when Beka took him out to work on the Maru in  
zero-G was nothing like that, though.  It was sickening.  One thing  
to climb, another to have no idea which way he might fall and be  
falling at the same time.

In his ear, "Harper."

"Oh *fuck*, Beka."

"Close your eyes."

"Gonna be sick."

"No you're not.  You've been swimming.  Close your eyes and pretend  
you're in water."  She pressed herself against his back, pressed his  
EVA suit against the hull.  Her gloves in the hand-holds on either  
side of him.  "Breathe."

Her knee between his knees.  Holding him down.  "Breathe."  

Breathing.

"You're okay.  You can't drown.  You can dive any way you want to.    
You're just floating.  The water's very clear; that's why you can  
see so far.  You cool?"

"I'm good."

"Good."

She let him go, after she checked his tethers.  Watched him dive for  
the next ten minutes while he tested himself, then slammed him back  
against the hull and made him work.

Pulled him in through the airlock behind her, finally.  Pulled his  
helmet off and slammed an oxygen mask over his mouth, talked to him  
wildly while he pulled back out of oxygen deprivation, ranting about  
the way he *breathed*.  Too used to unlimited oxygen, maybe the only  
luxury he'd ever had that she didn't.

"Strip."

He was so high on asphyxiation followed by too much oxygen that he  
didn't question.  Just peeled down, suit, then clothes.  Let her  
march him into the bathroom and into the shower without even  
thinking about how she'd managed to shed her clothes when she always  
had at least one hand on his back.

The shower was blasting hot.  He was so cold.  The night outside had  
been sucking out his body heat for god knew how long, and he hadn't  
*felt* it.  Couldn't even really believe it, not until Beka showed  
him how cold the water was running while it scalded him.  Scrubbing  
the fear-sweat off himself, brushing against Beka's skin.  Breast  
against his cheek for a second while he turned.

Naked.

Beka tangled around him, her face turned up into the shower's spray,  
smoothing her hair back. Tattoo on her belly, just below her navel.    
Pubic hair in an oddly patterned tangle of red and blonde.  Her  
breasts pushed out every time she arched back.

"Beka ..."

"How's your body temp?"

"I'm cold."

"If you can tell you're cold, you're better off than you were.    
Here, get under the spray."  Quick turn with her breasts brushing  
his collarbone, and then searing heat that pushed him down to his  
knees, whining.  "Get up."  She hauled him to his feet, held him  
upright until he was willing to stand.  Taste on her like soap and  
metallic heat.  She wasn't as hard as he was used to women being,  
but she was bigger.  Softer.  Hair between her legs, but none under  
her arms.

One kiss, his mouth reaching up to hers under the water.

He crawled down to lie beside her, later that night.  Both of them  
with very clean hair and skin, in clean clothes.  He was still  
unsteady from the return to gravity.  Even so, hanging by his knees  
from the rail while he looked down at her helped in some obscure  
way.  He stayed doing it until she snaked out a hand in a way that  
proved exactly how little faith she had in his ability to keep from  
falling on his head.

She rolled over when he dropped down beside her.  Let him nuzzle  
into her throat and push up against her, smell skin and warm human,  
like she really got how lonely he was.  Carded her fingers through  
his hair and then dozed.

When he touched her, she didn't flinch.  Didn't respond, either, but  
he hadn't really been expecting her to.  He was exhausted, aching  
from the return to gravity.  Just needed to touch her. Fingers on  
her skin, in her hair.  Under the edges of her clothes.  Hollows at  
her neck.  One finger hooked into the waist of her pants to trace  
the line of her tattoo.

Soft.  Tiny hairs at the edges of his touch.

She wasn't asleep.  When he slid a hand down to rest just below her  
navel, she caught her waistband and pulled it down level with her  
hipbones so he could touch.  Her trust in him made him ache all  
over.  Her eyes stayed closed, even when he traced the tattoo  
marking the bottom rim of her belly's outward curve.  She was soft  
there: not quite a swell, but actual flesh on a human body, more  
than he'd ever expected to see or touch.

"Harper."

He dropped his mouth, kissed her.  Tongued her navel until she  
gasped.  "Please?"

This flesh in the palm of his hand.  It moved whenever she breathed,  
twitched with every tense shift of her body.  Soft in spite of that,  
feminine in a way he'd never expected.  Dark, deep taste of her in  
her navel, shivering under his tongue.

Until she pushed him off, finally, and pulled her pants up to cover  
the wet skin he'd left.

He curled up beside her, listening to her breathe.  One clothed  
breast just barely touching him.

He kept her smell on him.  Her perfume was in the bathroom; it  
wasn't hard.  He was wearing her shirt a week later when he found  
the market stall full of chemical drink-mix packets.  Electrically-  
bright colours that spilled into his hand, though the powder turned  
out, when he tasted it, to be bitter and sugarless.  Spitting onto  
the floor, then staring at the colour stain in his palm.

He bought dozens of them.  Hauled them back to the Maru with their  
box under one arm and a case of machine parts under the other, let  
them spill onto the flight deck floor.

Beka said, "You want us to what?"

"Dye Rev."

"I beg your pardon, Master Harper?"

"Dye you.  Change your colour."

"Harper, if Rev wanted to be a different colour, he could get  
nanobots or something."

He shook his head.  "It's not the same.  This stuff is *weird*.    
It's sticky.  It smells almost like food."

Rev picked up one foil packet, very carefully, and slit it open with  
a claw.  Poured it into his hand and dipped his tongue into it.    
Spat horribly onto the floor.  "That is foul."

"Yeah, well, nobody told you to eat it."

"Harper, I believe I would prefer to retain my current colour."

"You suck.  What'll I do with all this, then?  Beka?"

She shifted her hair colour quickly, red to gold to black.  "No  
hope."

"You do realize what I'm going to have to do."

"If your hair all falls out, you'll have no one to blame but  
yourself, Harper."

"Hey, if I end up bald, I can get tattoos."  The smell from the open  
packet was disturbingly tempting, like something that should taste  
amazing, a trick that would've worked best on poison.  He'd checked  
the powder, and himself, to make sure it wasn't deadly before he  
brought it in. Vague mental images of spending the next week curled  
up in the head puking his guts out still had his skin crawling.  The  
powder had nothing in it, though, but a few preservatives, a few  
esters, a lot of dye.

So.  The Maru's bathroom wasn't designed for body modification, and  
the door was open so Beka could laugh at him and still watch.    
Handed him petroleum jelly and told him what he looked like with the  
electric blue dripping down his naked back.  Described a couple of  
diseases she'd run into that would have had the same result.

The drooling paste he'd made to do this with stung his scalp.  He  
smelled wild sugar that he knew wasn't there, and not-quite-natural  
fruit.  Strange, primitive chemicals turning him into a brightly-  
coloured form of food.  Reverse camouflage, maybe.  Making him  
highly visible but too inorganic to be nutritious.

He was still wet when Beka grabbed him from behind.  Smeared  
something across the back of his neck and then licked him.  Pulled  
away and laughed.

Sugar on her fingers, sparkling at him in the bathroom's too-bright  
light.  "It's official.  Add sugar and serve.  You're lunch,  
Seamus."

He chased her.  Dripping, shirtless, too cold in the Maru's constant  
chill, through the corridors in his bare feet, listening to her  
shriek laughter at him and feeling maybe happier than he'd been  
since a couple of really good, bright days when he was a kid in a    
pack of cousins.  Caught her at the edge of the tiny bridge and  
licked her face, leaving brilliant blue in a trail after him.

"Gotcha."

Later, while she was chasing him, Rev caught him around the waist to  
keep both of them from falling, as carefully as anyone with claws  
like that could.  Rev *grinned* at him.  Terrifying, really.  Too  
many teeth and claws, and Harper grinned back.  Smeared the last of  
his nearly-dry colour onto Rev's arm, leaving a faint dark place.    
If it was going to really show up, they'd have to bleach him first.

He landed in her bunk, finally.  Just wrestled with her for the  
longest time.  Sticky and pale, both of them showing more blue on  
their skin than had stayed in his hair.  And with the sugar, he  
found out, it did taste good.  Beka-scented candy fingers covering  
his mouth to keep him from yelling.  That he pulled into his mouth  
and sucked on.

This weird dominance thing, him half on top of her, sucking on her  
fingers while the nails of her other hand dug into the base of his  
skull.  Some kind of message there that he was ignoring.  He  
wondered if she thought she'd adopted some kind of spiky, strange  
pet with touching privileges.

She smacked him.  Not hard, but enough to get his attention and to  
free her fingers.  "Seamus."

"Trust The Harper."

"With what?"  Hard fish-eye look.  Something very, very wrong with  
his brain for it to be that sexy.  Too many hormones.  Brain damage  
from the dye seeping through his scalp.

"We're in bed, half naked, covered in blue stuff and sugar.  Wanna  
have sex?"  She sighed. Tapped her fingers on the currently  
accidental spikes of his hair.  "Hey, boss.  I'm still yours. Even  
if you say no."

She rolled him under her, kissed him hard.  "Sure.  Why not?"

"Because Rev'll get to watch?"  He had an evil brain.  It made him  
say Very Bad Things.

"He's on watch."

"You think I'll be done by the time he gets off?  You wound me."

"You have to work in eight hours whether you get any sleep or not."

"But I suppose you get to sleep in."

"I'm the Captain."

"That's not --"

"Harper."

She was bigger than he was, and strong enough to hold him down.    
Fast hands, too.  Like he'd said the magic word and she'd kicked  
herself into high gear.  One of the very good things that'd  
happened to him in the last six months, though all of her fell into  
that category, and the fierce, bitey sex-Beka was mostly just a  
sharp edge he hadn't caught himself on before.

Naked against her with his leg hooked around hers to hold her in  
place, doing war on the macrame disaster of her shirt while she  
rubbed against him violently enough to hit the crown of his head  
against the wall.  Growling at him.  He could smell her, soaking wet  
through the dark layers of her pants.  When he snaked a hand down  
and rubbed hard at the seam, she bucked and she fought him when he  
tried to take it away again.

"Seamus, I swear if you stop that . . ."

"Picky, picky, picky.  Give me a sec to get this stuff *off*.  Who  
the hell dresses you, some kind of fetishist?"  Toolbelt.  He found  
the sharp edge of a screwdriver and hooked it in at the back of her  
neck.  "Hold still."  Pulled until it ripped, then pulled the whole  
mess off her.

"Harper!"

"You want sex, you need nakedness."  She pushed him off.  "Hey!"    
Aching.  Watching her roll off him and walk away.

She said, "I want to have some clothes left at the end of this."

Something half-furtive about the way she stripped, like she was way  
too used to being mostly naked in front of him to want to turn it  
into a show.  She stood there afterward, watching him, with one hand  
cupping her sex almost absently.

"Do you want this?"

A hugely stupid question, considering that he was hard and naked and  
reaching for her. Considering that he had dreams about the way her  
mouth tasted, and they were definitely sex dreams, even if some of  
them involved bananas and nanowelders and rabbit ears as well as  
naked Beka.  "Bite me."

"Seriously."

"You're gonna kill me, Beka.  Yeah, I want you."

She cocked an eyebrow at him.  "How?"

Harper rolled out of her bunk and padded over to her, closed his  
lips on the nipple nearest his mouth.  Bit it carefully, then  
harder.  Pushed his thigh up hard against her clit when she growled  
at him and rocked her there.  "Any way I can have you."

She pulled free and padded off to one of the cabinets.  He grabbed  
for her, missed her shoulder, caught her wrist.  Decided never to  
let go of her, then was struck sideways by a disturbing mental image  
of Beka travelling the known worlds with a naked Harper wrapped  
around her and clinging.

She offered him.  Blue.  He thought it might be silicone.  The  
harness attached to it was definitely leather; he could smell it.    
Actual animal hide bracing one very dark blue, disturbingly pretty  
plastic dick.

"Oh man."  Weakly.

"Yes?"

Did he?  God yes.  Anything.  For her, from her, all over her and  
any way he could get her.  Anything he needed to do to prove he was  
hers.  "Yeah.  Oh yeah."

She stayed watching him while he crawled back into her bunk, like  
she expected him to Assume The Position or something.  He didn't,  
though, just crouched and stared back at her until she pounced.

Too small a space for the two of them to be doing this, but he  
decided he didn't care.  She had tiny, hard nipples, and she loved  
it when he bit them.  And she didn't ask permission after that first  
time, just moved his knees when she needed to and got one slick  
finger up him, and another one sometime after that.  Worked on  
finger fucking him until he was way too close to frantic, reaching  
to finger her back and never quite reaching deep enough to get  
anything but shallow, slick touches.  Her taste on his fingers that  
he fed to her.

On his back, finally, under her, with his legs around her waist.    
Letting her push into him, deep enough to hurt.  Babbling at her  
when she finally took him.  She hissed when he twisted.  He was only  
half aware that something connected to the cock in him was in *her*,  
that she was fucking both of them.  It didn't seem possible, except  
in those little moments when her breath caught. She had too much  
control.  More like she was feeding on the blindingly intense thing  
she was doing to him.  Fucking him slow and hard and way too deep,  
making his belly twist around her voice in his ear, telling him he  
was pretty, smelled good, that she liked the blue on him. Laughing  
whenever he moaned.

"You playing me, Beka?"

"Nope.  Just fucking you."  Fingers rubbed at his temples.    
"Seriously, are you okay?"

"I'm good.  It's just.  God, Beka.  Deep in me, you know?  Have you  
got any idea how this feels?"

"Yeah, I do."

She kissed him.  Never for long enough for him to tangle his tongue  
around hers, but wet and constant, listening to him and shifting and  
listening again like she could get off just on the sounds he made.    
Her fingers wrapped around his cock, finally, about the time his  
knees gave and he had to spread for her as best he could with his  
feet braced on the mattress.  Hissing at her that he loved her.    
Very fiercely not looking over at the alien eyes that watched him  
from the door.

"Rev's watching us."

"No he's not."

"You're the captain and I -- oh god -- I know you're always right,  
but he really, really *is*."

"Nobody here but me fucking you, Seamus."  She pushed in, hard and  
deep, and rocked there.  Made sure he felt it all over.  "Come for  
me."  Squeeze.  "Come on."

Not as perfectly as she'd commanded, but he did.  Sticky mess on her  
fingers, on both their skins, and she didn't stop the slow rock  
inside him while he came.  Didn't stop after, either, not until he  
finally just clamped onto her and whimpered.  Not quite *no*, but  
something like *hurts*.

Beka pulled out and settled down beside him with the strap-on  
pushing against his leg.  Some kind of reminder that she hadn't come  
yet.  He stupidly caught it in his hand before it occurred to him  
there wasn't any point.  Except.  She moaned when he tugged.  Aching  
underneath that harness if he could just get to her.

Soft hair under the leather.  She was soaking wet.  All down her  
thighs, all over the inside of his thighs too.  He peeled the  
harness back and found slick, swollen Beka underneath.  Mouthed and  
fingered her, careful of the shaft still pushing up inside.

He licked her all over.  Fucked her gently with the body-warm  
silicone and sucked at her clit and rode her out while she came.    
Pulled the shaft out after and rubbed gently at the wet opening with  
his thumb.  Kissing her for most of the night.

She kicked him out of bed five minutes before his alarm would have  
dragged him awake.  He made sure that by the time she was out of the  
shower she couldn't find him.  

She only hunted him down hours later, and kissed his neck until he  
relaxed against her.  He could have kissed her for hours, just  
loving her skin and her hair, the fierce Beka-smell that crawled  
into his brain whenever he nuzzled her.

"You good, Seamus?"

He sighed.  "Yeah."

"Good."  She ruffled his hair before he could push her off, then  
used the top of his head for leverage while she stood.  Petted him  
again before she left.

Sometime after that, claws ground against the deck plating and  
Harper worked very hard on not flinching while Rev Bem came and  
crouched beside him.  Big, terrifying mass of fur who loomed over  
him with way too much patience, like he'd stay there for however  
many weeks it took Harper to stop ignoring him.

"What can I do ya for, Rev?"

"Are you well?"

"Beka already asked.  I'm good."

"I was concerned that you might be disturbed.  I have occasionally  
observed that Beka's affections can bloody their objects."

"I heal pretty good.  And you gotta believe that I enjoyed it, Beka  
being the lovely girl she is."

"Harper."  Rev settled fully onto the floor.  Leaned in and.  Hugged  
him.

It went down as the moment in his life that he had to work hardest  
to resist the screaming spazz-attack clawing up from the base of his  
stomach.  Wrestling it down took all the energy he had. Very, very  
still in the middle of that hug, trying to ignore the warm,  
frightening scent of Rev's fur.  Something under the Maru's soap  
that was beyond primal.

Rev held onto him for a long time while Harper fought the terror  
down and as a result sat stiller than he ever had before in his  
life.  Something more fundamental even than his own vibrating energy  
at work.  He ached inside, and Rev was telling him about things he  
didn't believe, and he was sure, somehow, in spite of her utter  
invisibility, that Beka was watching.  

There were eyes on him all the time.  Everything he'd seen his space  
was murky, except Beka, who glowed luminously pale.  And he did too,  
now.  Paler than he'd ever been before in his life, utterly visible  
in this new darkness.


End file.
